COVER STORY
a 107-Year-Old Lives On
BROADCAST REPORTER AND DIGITAL EDITOR
o matter where Viola Ford Fletcher has lived over the last 100 years – Claremore, Okla., California, Bartlesville, Okla., or now back in Tulsa – the lights inside her home stay on from sundown to sunrise. Thoughts of a frantic escape from unspeakable hatred and violence still disrupt her peace.
“Every night. Every day.”
Fletcher says that’s how frequently she recalls the horrific 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and her family’s nighttime ride in a horse-drawn buggy to narrowly get out of town before an infernal mob descended upon their home.